Two Christmases for the price of one for us this year…first to our daughter’s in Edinburgh. Lovely flight up this time with clear views, spectacular over the city itself. When in Edinburgh we are never short of things to do with our granddaughter…the nearby children’ playpark on the Meadows is always a good start….

and another thing Edinburgh is not short of is good coffee shops. Here we warmed up after our playpark adventures, and met Mum and Dad…

We were treated to 3 evenings out to view Christmas lights in incredibly different guises….here is a little princess at the start of our first evening which was a bus-ride out of Edinburgh…….. Archerfield Walled Garden lays out a fantasy fairy trail at Christmas….

and we wound our (cold) way through the woods stopping to examine lots of little fairy houses in the trees

and to watch a magical meeting between our princess and a real-live fairy (we think!).

It was all very well done and we enjoyed ourselves very much. Christmas treats went on and on as next day we were treated to a Christmas performance by our granddaughter and friends…

I really really liked the snow machine (and so did the children!)……

On this particular evening we went to a quite stupendous light display at Edinburgh Zoo. Chinese lanterns made with thousands of yards of silk, and fashioned by Chinese artisans into the most wonderful images…

The detail was amazing. We were also treated to a staged show of Chinese jugglers and acrobats who in themselves were very skilled indeed. A terrific evening.

Next day was Panto (Little Red Riding Hood, Scottish-style) and ‘Christmas’ lunch (the date of 17th December didn’t stop us in any way)….. and opening of presents. The cheapest (vile pink unicorn slippers from Lidl) went down well – as expected!

On our last evening we took Aiisha to the Fair in Princess Gardens which has a lovely atmosphere and gets better each year

Luckily we had a responsible adult with us….

and if all else fails it’s good to settle down to a quiet read of the newspaper!

A lovely early Christmas then in a lovely city with our lovely family…